Cool treats refresh region’s hot summer days

Forty years ago, President Ronald Reagan designated July as National Ice Cream Month and the third Sunday of the month as National Ice Cream Day. This year’s observance may have come and gone, but plenty of scorching summer days lie ahead in August and early September, just right for beating the heat with a cold summer treat.

While the Gipper focused on ice cream, an increasing diversity of chilled frivolities are becoming available for kids of all ages in the Boulder Valley and Northern Colorado – from gelato, snow cones, frozen yogurt and shaved ice to nitrogen-chilled dairy delights.

According to the International Dairy Foods Association, the average American eats roughly 20 pounds of ice cream each year, or about four gallons. The trade group says ice cream companies give a sweet jolt to the U.S. economy to the tune of more than $13 billion a year,  directly to the national economy and support nearly 29,000 direct jobs that generate $1.8 billion in direct wages.

Familiar national chains such as Baskin-Robbins and Cold Stone Creamery proliferate in the region, but the IDFA says most ice-cream stores in the United States are family owned. That goes for purveyors of other frozen treats as well.

Just ask folks such as Bo Abbott and Kristen Abbott, Kenny Haap and especially Neige LaRue, whose first name is the French word for snow.

From their light blue Volkswagen van, the Abbotts serve up snow cones topped with homemade syrups containing just fruit and sugar every Wednesday at the farmers market in downtown Boulder. They started their business, Summer Snow, so they could work together alongside their daughters Ellington, 10, and Emmeline, 7, throughout the summer.

According to a news release from Boulder County Farmers Markets, the Abbotts see starting and running a business as a learning experience for the family and their one high-school-aged employee, Jean-Pierre, known as “JP.” Besides learning that running a business is more than just showing up and clocking in, the kids love taking orders, interacting with customers and building relationships with the vendors around them.

The Abbotts’ next step might be to find a more permanent location for Summer Snow next summer, add another farmers market day or even another van.

Punch Buggy Shaved Ice is a bit different from Abbotts’ mom-and-pop operation, LaRue said. “There’s no pop in the shop. It’s just a mom shop.”

LaRue, who grew up on the “Kona side” of Hawaii’s Big Island and remembers eating intensely flavored shaved ice atop ice cream after a long day on the beach, also focuses on mentoring young people. “I employ mostly kids 16 to 22,” she said, “and I make sure their safety is my number one priority and that their parents are OK with it.”

Like the Abbotts, LaRue’s business has a link to Volkswagens – but Beetles, not vans.

“I wanted to name my company something that reminded me of what life was like when I was a kid,” she said. “On long road trips, we didn’t have iPads or anything like that, so my sister and I would play ‘punch buggy’ and punch each other in the arm whenever one of us saw a VW bug.”

She got a big scoop of challenges when she opened her Louisville location in 2019, just before the COVID-19 pandemic forced many businesses to scale back their public access.

“It has not been the smoothest sailing, as any small business can attest,” LaRue said. “We had one normal summer and then the COVID summer, and I had no idea how to navigate that.”

But it worked, she said. “The only ones who came into the shop were the employees, and everyone was masked. Guests just came up to the walk-up window. We managed to stay safe as a team.”

A silver lining, she said, was that “Louisville had closed off Main Street, so we just spread out our tables all over the street.”

She opened a second location in Lafayette last year, and also has served her Hawaiian-style shaved ice out of a food truck at events such as the Boulder Creek Festival and Lafayette Peach Festival.

LaRue said her shops are generally open from May 1 through Sept. 30, and “maybe we’ll stay open a little longer if we have a hot fall.”

Once they close for the winter, she said, “I’ll re-engage as a full-time mom, and take surfing trips to places like Hawaii, Nicaragua and El Salvador,” she said. “The ocean is my happy place.”

Another new variation on frozen fare is HipPOPs, a purveyor of handcrafted gelato bars that began as a food truck in Florida. It became the eighth and final vendor to fill the Parkway Food Hall, which opened in May in south Longmont.

HipPOPs was founded in 2012 in south Florida by Anthony “Tony” Fellows, who had more than 30 years of experience managing, owning and operating frozen-dessert businesses. He developed a way to place handcrafted gelato on a stick and sell it at mobile sites. In Miami Beach in 2017, Fellows met three men who operated businesses in Denver. By 2020, they had rolled out a new POPtruck in Denver, built a creamery and added an executive chef. They now have an extensive schedule of food-truck appearances along the Front Range.

An even cooler variation will come to Fort Collins as soon as Haap finds a contractor to help him build out a Sub Zero Ice Cream shop west of the Colorado State University campus.

With 30 years of experience in the hospitality industry but declaring he’s “tired of working for The Man,” Haap wants his Campus West location to be the 20-year-old Provo, Utah-based chain’s 27th store. The concept is part culinary art and part science lesson, thanks to Sub Zero founders Jerry and Naomi Hancock. With a background in chemistry, Jerry Hancock developed a method to freeze ice cream using nothing other than liquid nitrogen. He and wife Naomi patented the two-minute process that takes liquid cream and drops its temperature to 321 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. Customers can watch it happen, complete with a cloud of fog.

Haap is excited for what customers will see in his new shop when his 500-liter liquid nitrogen tank produces a frozen treat. “They’ll be able to touch and feel the evaporation from the talk and eat some science after,” he said.

In the meantime, he has portable 30- and 50-liter dewar tanks he uses for catering events such as weddings and performing science demonstrations to school groups.

In his shop, customers first will pick a base — original cream or a reduced-fat, vegan or sugar-free foundation. Next they can choose among more than 35 flavors and create their own combinations. Then they can choose mix-ins such as candy, nuts or fruit. Finally, they can watch it freeze through what the company calls a “wonder of science.”

Another fresh approach can be found at Sweet Cow, with locations in Boulder, Longmont and Louisville.

Using entirely compostable and recyclable products at its locations, Sweet Cow’s rotating list of creations are inspired by a sense of whimsy and experimentation. Where else can you find flavors such as apple pie, Earl Grey tea, chocolate banana, sweet corn, blueberry pancake, tastes incorporating Lucky Charms or Fruity Pebbles cereals, or a vodka-infused Big Lebowski.  The company also has a food truck it calls a “Moo Mobile” that can come to your event or even your house.

Local sourcing is “part of the magic,” Sweet Cow says on its website. “It is why our Ozo Coffee flavor lifts you off the ground! It is the reason the aroma from our waffle cones can travel a block down the street as a testament to the Indonesian cinnamon sourced by the Savory Spice Shop, or why our Hammonds Peppermint Stick tastes like you are home for the holidays.”

Other shops to try include Josh & John’s, a Colorado Springs-based company with locations in Fort Collins and Loveland; Boulder’s iconic and award-winning Glacier Homemade Ice Cream and Gelato, which was founded 23 years ago and has created more than 1,000 flavors to date; Hispanic- and woman-owned Heaven Creamery in Boulder, which boasts an ever-changing list of ice cream, sorbet and gelato flavors; Walrus Ice Cream in Fort Collins, which opened in 1987 and has a rotating list of 29 homemade flavors; Mauka Shaved Ice, a food truck based in Erie; and Hayley’s Ice Cream in downtown Estes Park, where tourists line up on summer days and rave about the Mexican chocolate flavor when it’s available; Rainbow Paleta Bar in Loveland, which makes its own ice cream and popsicles; Paradice Cream in Loveland and Milliken, known for its Andes mint ice cream; and Jenny’s Malt Shop in Greeley, with more than 100 flavors of ice cream, malts, shakes and Hawaiian shave ice.

And for something a little different, there’s the Blue Raspberry Sno-Cone Sour at Wiley Roots Brewing Co. in Greeley. It’s the brewery’s slushy sour ale with blue raspberry snow cone syrup.